The Path of Conversion of Heart – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; March 8, 2026

The Gospel of the Samaritan woman gives us the most developed personal, one-on-one conversation with Jesus recorded in all the Gospels. For that reason, we might want to call it the “Gospel of personal relationship with Jesus”. In doing so, however, we might also want to call to mind Jesus’ words, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. (Jn 15:16)

Of course, in today’s Gospel, the initiative clearly lies with Jesus; the Samaritan woman was not seeking him out and would have just assumed to avoid him. The background details are also important. Jesus is tired and thirsty. On one hand, this is simply a manifestation of the reality of his sacred humanity, that he took into his divine person for the sake of our salvation. On the other hand, his weariness speaks of the labor of the good Shepherd, who has gone in search of his lost sheep, one of which he finds coming out to the well to draw water. Further, his thirst, which he will give expression to again as he hangs upon the Cross, speaks of the intensity of his desire for our response of faith and love. St. Augustine wrote: “He who was asking drink was thirsting for the faith of the woman herself.” (Tractate 15 on the Gospel of John) This takes place at about Noon, the hour at which Jesus would be nailed to the Cross.

The initiative belongs to Jesus, but we cannot respond to him except that we have some idea of the gift of God, which is the Holy Spirit, and who it is that is asking for a drink, the Son of God made man.

The woman, who begins by challenging Jesus, the stranger who has interrupted her daily labor, slowly begins to gain some hint of who Jesus is when she sees that he claims to be greater than the patriarch Jacob. She does not yet understand the gift of God, but begins to desire it. She thinks maybe she will be able to save herself the labor of drawing water from the well, but Jesus seeks to awaken in her a deeper thirst.

Two obstacles impede the development of her response to Jesus. The first is her past, from which she seeks to hide, like Adam and Eve hiding in the midst of the trees of the garden. (cf. Gen 3:8) The second is her people, who are ignorant of the worship in spirit and truth.

Jesus begins to make known who he is by revealing her past, revealing the woman to herself. There are two ways we could consider what Jesus brings to light about the woman: first, there is the perspective of her moral failure, she has not led an upright life; then, what is really a different view of the same reality, is the misery, shame, and disappointment that has come from pursuing a disordered love.

St. Augustine, who in the first thirty years of his life, lived rather like the Samaritan Woman, would come to express the message he received from God, saying: “Seek what you seek; but it is not there where you seek it. You seek a blessed life in the land of death; it is not there. For how should there be a blessed life where life itself is not?” (Confessions, IV.12) We cannot enter into a personal relationship with Jesus unless we are willing to let him make us known to ourselves and lead us on the path of moral conversion; unless we are willing to let him reorder our desires.

Conversion of the heart is not once and done, but is the path of the Christian life, so long as we are in this world. Even if we do not have big sins, regular confession is an important, concrete, practical means to follow the path of continual conversion, acknowledging our sins before the minister of Christ and opening our hearts to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, the Gift of God.

The second obstacle is her people: Our ancestors worshipped God on this mountain. To which Jesus replied, You people worship what you do not understand.

There is a great deal that is packed into this brief part of the dialogue.

One way to put it is that people learn how to live from their parents and from their parents’ people; they learn their religion (which we might speak of as the overarching or all-encompassing rule of life) or lack thereof from their parents and from their parents’ people. Generally, in the history of the human race, this has been a rather hit-or-miss affair. St. Paul put it this way: [God] made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in hope that they might grope for him and find him. (Acts 17:26-27) That is the origin of the multiplicity of religions. It is the result of human groping in the dark. Alas, we can have a strange fondness for the darkness that is familiar.

Yet, Jesus, speaking first as a Jew, says, we worship what we understand. Already, the religion of the Old Testament was different. It was not the result of human groping in the dark, but came from God making himself known, revealing himself to Abraham, to Moses, and to the Prophets. And so the Psalmist proclaimed, In Judah God is known, his name is great in Israel. (Ps 76[75]:1) Even so, St. Paul spoke of the obscurity of that revelation, writing, In many and various ways God spoke of old to our ancestors by the prophets. (He 1:1)

Then, however, Jesus announces the new light that he himself brings, the hour is coming and is now here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. So also, St. Paul added, in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the world. (He 1:2) Jesus Christ, the Son of God, himself is the new light, the light that has come into the world, that men might believe and become children of God. (Jn 1:1-14)

This new light is hard for men, whether Jew or Samaritan or Gentile, to accept because they are attached to their old ways, received from their parents and their people; they are comfortable with the darkness.

But we are Catholics, we have already received the light! Well and good, but it is not enough merely to receive the faith from one’s parents and from one’s people, though that is already a great gift. Yet, Christ has called us from every tribe and tongue and people and nation to make us a kingdom and priests to our God. (Rev 5:9)

We can consider that the Samaritan villagers first believed on account of the woman’s word, then they met Jesus and said, We have heard for ourselves. It is not enough for us just to have heard from our parents or our people; we must “take ownership” and take responsibility for our faith, the inheritance we have received. We could say that a personal relationship with Jesus calls for personal faith in Jesus.

We need to follow the same path of conversion upon which Jesus led the Samaritan woman. It is a path that leads through moral conversion to worship in spirit and truth. It is a path upon which we discover that the one who speaks to us is no less the Messiah and Son of God, through whom all things were made. It is a path upon which we discover the gift of living water, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the fountain of eternal life. To worship in spirit and truth means to worship God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, in the life of grace that has been given to us, in the truth, which is Jesus Christ himself, the Word made flesh for our salvation.

As the Word of truth was made flesh and became visible, so he left us a visible worship in Spirit and truth. The worship that Jesus himself has given to us is no longer limited to a temple in Jerusalem but is offered in every place throughout the world. (cf. Mal 1:11) We worship the Father in spirit and truth by offering him the truth of the Body and Blood of Christ, in the Holy Spirit. We worship the Father in spirit in truth when, having heard for ourselves, we are not merely bodily present at Mass, but offer our own lives, in the Holy Spirit, through, with, and in Jesus Christ.

The path of personal relationship, the path of personal conversion, leads us to take our place in what should be the assembly of the saints (cf. Ps 40[39]:9; Heb 10:25, 12:22-24), the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

We go in to receive Christ; we go out to proclaim him. We go in to become one with Christ; we go out to share in his mission. We share in his mission as the woman went back into the village to tell her townsmen about Jesus, and as Christ himself called upon the Apostles to reap the harvest that he had sown.

Notice that the woman left her jar by the well. That tells us how her life had been changed by her encounter with Jesus; leaving her jar at the well, she effectively forgot her past five husbands as well as the man she was presently with. Jesus became her all. When, early in life, without first following the woman’s misguided path, someone has such an encounter with Jesus, it makes sense to give oneself completely to him and so follow him upon the path of virginity or celibacy. That is one special way to share in his mission.

Then there are Jesus’ own words when his Apostles urge him to eat: My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. The mission of the priest is to feed upon the will of Jesus as Jesus fed upon the will of his Father, to Jesus’ work, working in his vineyard, harvesting what he has sown through his death and resurrection.

The path of personal relationship with Jesus begins with desiring the gift he promises, life in the Holy Spirit, being willing to undergo the necessary conversion of heart and of life; it proceeds to joining in the worship in spirit and truth and sharing in Christ’s work and mission. This is the path upon which we follow him so as to arrive where he is in the glory of the Father. (Cf. Jn 17:24)